Single at Thanksgiving

Single at Thanksgiving

Several web pages linked to below:

(Link): How to Cope When You Are Alone on Thanksgiving

Excerpts:

by Arlin Cuncic

…Whatever the reason for being alone, there are ways that you can feel less lonely.

Thanksgiving

 Accept Being Alone
Accepting being alone doesn’t necessarily mean staying home and feeling lonely. There are many things that you can do on Thanksgiving that put you in the company of people, or connect you with people, while you are still alone.

Be Productive
Make it a productive day and get your house organized. Clean out closets, get the paperwork in order, make to-do lists, and generally get control of the little details in your life. You will end the day with a feeling of accomplishment, and the ability to focus on your relationships with others because your life is manageable.

‘I Stopped Having Sex or Relationships for Ten Years. Here’s What Happened’ by Anonymous

‘I Stopped Having Sex or Relationships for Ten Years. Here’s What Happened’ by Anonymous

(Link): ‘I stopped having sex or relationships for ten years. Here’s what happened’ by Anonymous

[The woman author in London describes having been in two relationships that broke up because both men cheated on her. She then quit her job, volunteered at a charity in another nation, came back to London and changed to yet another job and made other changes in her life]

Yet one thing eluded me. I couldn’t form a romantic attachment to men. I found men attractive and felt sexual energy towards some.

I enjoyed flirting but avoided sex out of fear it would cause an emotional attachment.

For the next decade of my life, from the age of 35 to 45, I had no relationships, one night stands or dalliances that would throw me off balance.

Wife Hospitalized with Covid Comes Home to Find Husband Dead from Virus

Wife Hospitalized with Covid Comes Home to Find Husband Dead from Virus

This poor lady. Condolences to her.

One reason I am posting this is to highlight that there are no guarantees in life – getting married is not some kind of magic spell that will make you immune to heartache or loneliness.

I’ve seen marriage-pushing conservatives, both secular and Christian, promote marriage by creating podcasts or blog posts trying to “scare” single adult into getting married by saying things like “If you don’t marry, you’ll die alone!”

After Covid became a thing, marriage-idolater Brad Wilcox, of the National Marriage Project and Institute for Family Studies, began publishing anti-singles hit pieces, saying how married people were doing better in the pandemic (no, they are not. See links at the end of this post).

You can get married but still end up alone – for one, if your spouse dies from Covid.

If the virus were a sentient being, it wouldn’t pause when it comes to you and think, “Well, I’m not going to get into this person’s respiratory system, because they’re married!”

You can be married all live long day and still end up dying – or your spouse could die before you do, leaving you single once more.

Time for Christians to stop marketing marriage as some kind of cure-all for everything that could ail a person.

(Link): Wife Hospitalized with Covid Comes Home to Find Husband Dead from Virus

by Jackie Salo
August 26, 2021

A Florida woman says she returned home from battling COVID-19 in the hospital to a “nightmare” scene with her husband dead after also contracting the virus.

Lisa Steadman, 58, said she was horrified to walk in Wednesday to discover her 55-year-old husband Ron’s body in the bedroom of their home in Winter Haven, Fox13 News reported.

Loneliness: Coping With the Gap Where Friends Used to Be by Olivia Laing

Loneliness: Coping With the Gap Where Friends Used to Be by Olivia Laing

(Link): Loneliness: Coping With the Gap Where Friends Used to Be

by Olivia Laing
July 18, 2021

Friendships can be difficult, and lockdowns have made them even harder to maintain. But we should cherish them

Almost every day for the past few months, I’ve told my husband I am lonely. Obviously I’m glad that he’s around.

What I miss are my friends. In the first lockdown, we stayed in touch with Zoom dates, which were awkward, often drunk and occasionally very joyful.

Those days are long gone. I’ve returned to texting, and though I’m often deep in four or five conversations at once, it isn’t the same as being together.

In the past year, there was a difficult bereavement in my family, and work has been harder than normal. None of these things are unique or insurmountable but the isolation has left me feeling almost capsized by anxiety and paranoia.

…But a lack of friends is a growing problem, in Britain and America alike. A  (Link): recent study, conducted by the American Enterprise Institute, suggests that the proportion of people who can name six close friends has dropped from 55% to 27% since the 1990s, while people who have no close friends at all had risen from 3% to 12%.

Celebrating Milestones in the Lives of Single Adults – by Anna Broadway

Celebrating Milestones in the Lives of Single Adults – by Anna Broadway

A few years ago, I did a blog post or two with similar content – pointing out how churches keep on ignoring or minimizing singles by ignoring them and their accomplishments while forcing everyone to acknowledge (generally during Sunday morning church services) the milestones of married parents (e.g., announcing pregnancies, Mother’s Day celebrations, etc).

There’s nothing like that for single adults. And it’s tiresome when you’re a single.

It’s tiresome to walk into a church regularly and see the pastor or whomever in the church acknowledge marriages, new births, etc. (and this is usually done during church services where you’re part of a captive audience, and it’s done from the pulpit, so you don’t have a choice but to listen to it), but they never congratulate the adult singles in the adult singles’ lives for their milestones (e.g., gaining another college degree, buying a first home alone, getting a job promotion, etc).

Most churches unfairly only recognize marriages and “baby-making” – it’s absolutely infuriating.

(Link): It’s the Summer of Weddings. Here Are Other Milestones We Can Celebrate.

Excerpts:

by Anna Broadway
June 14, 2021

The church has a unique opportunity to recognize markers of spiritual growth in our communities.

…But watching the joyous announcements and photos of this season triggered an internal battle over my status as a single woman and my “success” in adult life. As I learned from (Link): 17 months of researching Christian singleness around the world, many cultures deem marriage a mark of maturity into adulthood, a view that too often sidelines single people.

The Bible takes a different view of maturity: one based on a relationship with Christ rather than with another person. The apostle Paul, for example, called believers to develop certain qualities rather than hit certain life markers. That ought to have significant implications for what and how we celebrate.

Being Single Was Just a Part of Their Lives Before the Pandemic. Then It Became the Defining One by B. Luscombe

Being Single Was Just a Part of Their Lives Before the Pandemic. Then It Became the Defining One by B. Luscombe

(Link): Being Single Was Just a Part of Their Lives Before the Pandemic. Then It Became the Defining One

Excerpts:

[Article opens with interviews with single adults who are living alone in the Covid pandemic]

….At the dawn of 2020, about a quarter of American households were made up of people who lived alone. According to the U.S. Census, the number of households consisting of only one person has jumped 10% in the past 20 years to an all-time high of 28.4% in 2019.

Partly this is because people are marrying later in life (the average age of first marriage is nearing 30).

And partly, sociologists believe, it has to do with money. Wealthy countries generally have a higher proportion of people who can afford to live solo. At the same time, many people don’t want to get married and raise families until they feel financially secure. In 2017, 14% of Americans told Pew Research they had no interest in getting married.

Husband Dies of Covid-19 Only 48 Hours After Wife Gives Birth to Premature Baby

Husband Dies of Covid-19 Only 48 Hours After Wife Gives Birth to Premature Baby

Contrary to a lot of secular and Christian conservative marriage and nuclear family propaganda, getting married and/or having children are not guarantees that you won’t die alone or won’t face other hardships in life.

Maybe the following news headline could be used as one argument about why it’s better to remain single and childless.

(Link): Husband Dies of Covid-19 Only 48 Hours After Wife Gives Birth to Premature Baby

Michael Keene, an Army vet, got COVID-19 in early October. He died three weeks later, 48 hours after Nicole Keene, gave birth prematurely.

 By Meghan Holohan
Dec 18, 2020

After struggling with COVID-19 for three weeks this fall, Jeffery Michael Keene, 39, was admitted to the hospital. Doctors tried stabilizing him without intubating him, but they had to place him on a ventilator on Oct. 16. Wife, Nicole Keene, worried. She was a respiratory therapist and knew that being on a ventilator was “not to be taken lightly.”

But then Keene went into labor at 34 weeks and her son, Michael Wesson, was born unresponsive. Doctors sent Wesson to the same hospital as his father. Two days later, Michael died without ever knowing Wesson was born.

People Are Happier Spending Time With Their Friends Than With Their Families, Study Finds

People Are Happier Spending Time With Their Friends Than With Their Families, Study Finds

If marriage-idolater and single-adult-shamer Bradford Wilcox, of “National Marriage Project” and “Institute of Family Studies” gets wind of this, I fully expect him to try to refute it by saying that married people are happier spending time with their spouses.

Wilcox, Al Mohler, and other marriage-obsessed anti-singleness bigots don’t care about truth – they care about pushing their pro-marriage agenda at all costs.

(Link): People Are Happier Spending Time With Their Friends Than With Their Families, Study Finds 

People are happier when they are with their friends than with their partner or children, a study has found

More than 400 volunteers were asked to rank how much they enjoyed a recent moment with their friends and family

Man Who Lost His Wife Puts Sign in Window Asking for Friends: ‘It’s My Last Resort’

Man Who Lost His Wife Puts Sign in Window Asking for Friends: ‘It’s My Last Resort’

Hello, Christians? Hello, churches?
Instead of obsessing over married-with-children couples and the little kids, teens, and college-aged students (typically in their early 20s), why don’t you stop and realize that the populations in some nations are aging and could use help and companionship?

Stop fixating on The Youth and Nuclear Families and start paying attention to folks outside of those groups – such as never-married singles who are over the age of 29, the divorced, and the widowed.

And let this be a lesson to hyper-marriage-promoters such as (but not limited to) Al Mohler and Bradford Wilcox, that getting married does NOT guarantee that a person will never suffer loneliness in life – if your spouse dies before you do, you will be alone.

If your spouse develops dementia or just loses interest in meeting your emotional needs, you will be alone – while married. 

Being married is not a guarantee that you won’t be lonely.

I wish this guy the best. I hope he’s able to make a friend or two.

(Link): Man Who Lost His Wife Puts Sign in Window Asking for Friends: ‘It’s My Last Resort’

Sept 15, 2020
by Hannah Sparks

Tony Williams isn’t asking for much.

The 75-year-old from Britain is tugging at the heartstrings of social media following his simple request: a friend.

Williams is still grieving the loss of his wife, Jo, who died in May. Since then, the retired physicist, who has neither children nor other family to visit, says he’s gone days without speaking to anyone.

“Jo was my best friend, and we had a lovely life. But now I’m all by myself. My wonderful wife has just died, and I have nobody,” he told SWNS.

In his desperation, Williams recently took out two ad blocks in his community newspaper — to no avail, according to SWNS, because he didn’t receive a single response.

Coronavirus: Even Married People With Children Die All Alone

Coronavirus: Even Married People With Children Die All Alone

There have been several news reports over the last two or three months reporting about how so many people – especially elderly people – are dying all alone due to Covid-19 (Coronavirus), whether they are dying in hospitals or nursing homes.

Due to wanting to contain the virus, medical facilities are not permitting family (if any) of the dying Covid patient to visit their sick loved one. So, a lot of people – even married parents! – are dying alone. (Links with examples to follow.)

I bring this up because one scare tactic I’ve seen used off and on by marriage-promoters, such as Southern Baptist Al Mohler and others, is to tell single and childless adults that we will die all alone, unless we marry and have children. They tell childless, never married adults like myself to be very afraid, because unless I marry and have a child, I will be all alone on my death bed.

Well, my mother – who was married and had adult children – died all alone in the wee hours at a care facility she was staying at. Despite the fact my mother was married with kids did not guarantee that she had the “Norman Rockwell” death so many marriage-pushers suggest one will have, where one will be surrounded by loving spouse holding their hand while adult children surround the bed tenderly looking on.

People dying all alone sans children and spouse (if they are married with kids) has definitely been a thing since the start of Covid 19.

Here are links about the situation, including a link or two from marriage-pushing, conservative sites such as The Federalist:

(Link): ‘Patients dying alone’: The frightening reality of many COVID-19 patients’ final moments  (March 2020)

(Link): ‘I’m Sorry I Can’t Kiss You’—Coronavirus Victims Are Dying Alone

(Link): Coronavirus Patients Are Dying Alone, Leaving Loved Ones With Grief And Guilt

It was the last time Beaudette saw her father alive. He died two days later, and she couldn’t be there.

(Link):  Loneliness and suffering in the hospital during the coronavirus crisis

“I’m already downstairs, doctor. Can I see my mother just for five minutes?”

I told him that I would ask the nursing manager; given the fact that Mrs. A couldn’t speak or understand, perhaps that would fall under the list of reasons why an exception could be made.

But five minutes later, the nurse was on the phone trying to calm him down. “I just want to be there for five minutes to tell her why I can’t visit anymore, that she shouldn’t worry when I stop showing up!”

The nurse tears up as she says that he cannot visit. She turns to me, and I motion that I would take back the call.

No Surprise There: Bradford Wilcox Deems Married People Better Off During Pandemic Than Single Adults – Rebuttals

No Surprise There: Bradford Wilcox Deems Married People Better Off During Pandemic Than Single Adults – Rebuttals

I have made several blog posts in years past discussing some of Bradford Wilcox’s articles about marriage for various publications.

Wilcox works for, is somehow affiliated with, organizations such as the National Marriage Project and Institute For Family Studies. He is very much about promoting marriage, natalism, and the nuclear family.

In years past, he has promoted marriage and all the rest at the expense of singleness: he loves to advance marriage by stigmatizing singleness.

Wilcox (and guys like him, such as Southern Baptist Al Mohler) likes to try to “scare” single adults into getting married by publishing faulty and fear-mongering essays about how studies (which he sometimes misquotes or misunderstands) supposedly say that singles are more likely to suffer this or that calamity or problem than are married people.

Any time Wilcox comments on any issue, you can guarantee before you click on the headline that his editorial will say that married people have X better than singles have X.

It doesn’t matter if he’s talking about financial issues – like in the link that follows – or some other topic.

His pieces are all heavily agenda-driven: to make marriage look fabulous by slamming singleness, or by making singleness look “worse” than marriage, or by making singleness look unsafe, scary, or miserable.

The “Dating Market” Is Getting Worse by A. Fetters and K. Tiffany

The “Dating Market” Is Getting Worse b A. Fetters and K. Tiffany

For anyone who cannot wait to get to it, here’s the link to the piece on The Atlantic:

(Link): The ‘Dating Market’ Is Getting Worse

Some of my comments about that piece before I put in some excerpts from it:

About the only “numbers approach” I have ever mentioned on my own blog here is that Christian women really do unnecessarily limit themselves if they try to live out the “Be Equally Yoked” philosophy in regards to dating and marriage, because the reality is, yes, the math is that there are not enough single, Christian men to go around for all the Christian single women who’d like to marry.

So, it makes sense to forgo the “equally yoked” rule, if one is a Christian, to date outside the Christian faith.

At the same time, though, I have seen other adults singles make much too much out of the “numbers game” philosophy on dating sites or comments sections on blogs about dating, where they make finding a romantic life partner sound so cold, or as though they’re shopping for a car.

There’s nothing wrong with having standards, but I am afraid there is a category of single adult who is too stringent or unrealistic with their lists of “must haves.”

I am personally turned off by anyone dispensing dating or “how to get married” advice who behave  as though there is a sure-fire guarantee way to land a spouse – because (Link): there is no such thing.

So, I’m really turned off by the many (sexist) attitudes and lists out there telling women if only the women do X, Y, and Z, they will absolutely get married to a great guy.

One problem is that most of these lists (which go viral on Twitter) are predicated on the notion that all men want and prefer 1950s, submissive, uber-feminine women.

Well, I lived that way for many decades – I was raised in a very traditional family that was into conservative values – so I had many of those prized traits sexist men online say will grant a woman a husband, but I remain never-married into my late 40s.

I was a very meek, docile, passive, sweet woman with traditional values, and no, it didn’t get me a husband.

(As I’ve aged, I’ve realized that it’s not a healthy or safe dating strategy for a woman to fit the picture of docile, overly feminine, passive, etc, that the “dating advice” gurus suggest on twitter and elsewhere, because many abusive, selfish, or controlling men intentionally seek out women with such qualities so that they can control, abuse, or take advantage of them.)

There are many conservatives – including women authors, unfortunately – who keep writing dating advice books for women, or who go on to FOX cable news morning shows, who keep encouraging women to engage in these dangerous dating strategies (of being a doormat, where being “feminine” is associated with doormat behaviors), which I’ve written about before (Link): here and (Link): here, among other blog posts.

The article below states at one point that men out-number women on dating sites. That may be so on some sites, but certainly not all.

Years ago, I had a paid membership on a dating site, and the site was forever claiming they could find no matches for me, most of the time.

For the four or five month paid subscription I had, I was only linked up to a total of about three men in that time.

My research on that particular online dating company found it’s the same with a lot of women, as it had been for me: that site tends to only “dribble out” a tiny number of matches for women, while they send male members more matches per month, every month.

Here are excerpts from…

(Link): The ‘Dating Market’ Is Getting Worse

The old but newly popular notion that one’s love life can be analyzed like an economy is flawed—and it’s ruining romance.

…It’s understandable that someone like Liz [a 30 year old single who is using dating apps to find dates] might internalize the idea that dating is a game of probabilities or ratios, or a marketplace in which single people just have to keep shopping until they find “the one.”

The idea that a dating pool can be analyzed as a marketplace or an economy is both recently popular and very old:
For generations, people have been describing newly single people as (Link): “back on the market” and (Link): analyzing dating in terms of supply and demand.